404 errors after setup

I'm having a rotten time attempting to set up an xampp testing server on Win 7 pro.
I have the Visual C++ 2008 redistributable libraries installed.
I don't have IIS installed/running, using the latest powerstore 4 verion...

I have xampp 1.8.1 which installs fine, I can configure it via the console, php(myinfo) displays as expected, I can log in to phpmyadmin, create a blank/empty database to use. I have set up a user account, and I can connect and ftp my site with filezilla client without issues.

No matter where I put my site, in htdocs, or in a powerstore folder inside htdocs I get that 404 error.

At one point last night I thought I had it solved, going through the setup program and activating, filling in the blanks everything supposedly was good but still no website.

I want to add mostly static pages to the store with the option of some dynamic forms (Created in AdobeForms Central) to collect specific data from users, required by my administration, so I need to test this locally to avoid causing issues with the live site.

Having searched for hours in these forums and not finding anything that solves this problem, here or on the Apache forum (not very friendly there...) I've almost given up.

How can it be that even if the site is uploaded to the htdocs folder, it isn't available at localhost ?

Advance thanks for considering/ reading this.

Interesting. I followed the exact same method and installed xampp on a windows 8 virtual machine running in Parallels 8 on my iMac and it works!! Xampp states all kinds of port errors in the control panel window, but the website has installed perfectly and I can see it in localhost. I can't imagine why it won't work in windows 7 or what I have done wrong, but at least I know it can work... This kinda gets me out of trouble for now.